


Go to the Limits of Your Longing

by BrighteyedJill



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood Friends, Dyslexia, Gen, Loneliness, Sad Ending, Young Witchers (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28388496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrighteyedJill/pseuds/BrighteyedJill
Summary: There are lots of things Lambert's never had before coming to Kaer Morhen, like his own bed, or enough food to eat in winter, or a library full of books, or a friend. And just because something exists doesn't mean Lambert's meant to have it.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 114
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge: Secret Santa (TWFFSS20)





	Go to the Limits of Your Longing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minutiae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minutiae/gifts).



> Title from the poem [Go to the Limits of Your Longing](https://apoemaday.tumblr.com/post/107332346812/go-to-the-limits-of-your-longing) by Rainer Maria Rilke
> 
> Minutiae, I am so sorry this turned out angsty, but... that's Lambert and libraries for ya!

After more than a year, Lambert had started to feel at home in Kaer Morhen despite his best efforts. He’d told himself he’d never settle in, never be anything like the monster who’d let his Da live and taken him away from his mother. But as strong as his rage was, even he couldn’t hold onto it every hour of every day. The trainee dormitory had a warm bed that was all Lambert’s. In the great hall, the servants brought as much food as the trainees could eat at every meal. In the practice yard, Lambert was learning to be dangerous with his fists and with a blade so no one would ever lay hands on him again. And in the stillroom, Lambert received regular praise from Master Nikodem, the alchemy instructor, for his precise and intuitive grasp of the alchemical arts.

Other parts of the keep, however, made it easier to remember why Lambert hated it. There were the basements, where each year a group of trainees descended for the Trial of the Grasses and only a few ever returned. There were the kitchens, where Lambert’s chores often involved peeling vegetables until his fingers cramped up. And then there was the library.

Lambert had never seen such a place before he arrived at Kaer Morhen: walls paneled with wood, thick beams holding up a vaulted ceiling, and rows of books reaching high above Lambert’s head, more books than Lambert had imagined existed. And they weren’t just for decoration, either; the instructors expected the trainees to _read_ them. Before, Lambert had caught sight of the few books the village wise woman kept in her house, but he’d never looked inside a book, or even held one.

The other trainees had laughed at Lambert’s ignorance. He’d been the last one to join their cohort--almost too old to be worth training, they’d told him. The others already had their letters. Some of them even spent their free evenings in the library reading for pleasure. In his first year at the keep, Lambert had had no free evenings, because he been at the mercy of Master Ksawery, sequestered in a dusty back room of the library learning how to decipher the marks in the books and make them himself in chalk upon a slate.

Ksawery, used to working with younger children, seemed to have an infinite store of patience, though Lambert did his best to test its limits. He scowled and grumbled, gave answers he knew were wrong or sometimes refused to answer questions at all, but still, Ksawery kept his temper. He didn’t beat Lambert when he made a mistake, or interrupt Lambert’s stupid, baby-sounding words as he read out loud to snap out a correction. He might merely say, “Try that last word again, lad. Sound out the letters,” no matter how many times the letters refused to be sounded.

As the weeks went on, Lambert’s non-answers to Ksawery’s questions came more often from sincere confusion rather than stubbornness. It wasn’t as if Lambert didn’t _want_ to learn how to decipher what was in all those books. When Ksawery read books to him, they often contained useful information or stories that made Lambert want to hear the end of them. So he listened and concentrated through blinding headaches and tried to match sounds with marks on the page, and eventually he could mostly work out what the books were saying.

After a year, Lambert had learned how to read and write the Nordling language and much of the Elder tongue, too, to the satisfaction of Master Ksawery. That didn’t mean he was good at it. The tiny, cramped print in most of the books the trainees were assigned to read swam before Lambert’s eyes, with letters switching places with each other or disguising themselves as different letters entirely. Pinning down the words was more difficult than nailing pigeons with a slingshot. His stomach knotted with dread at the mere thought of the library.

Over the years, the instructors had learned not to expect much from Lambert in the way of book work. Lambert took fewer notes than the other boys, though he often included little drawings to jog his memory. He much preferred the symbols used to annotate alchemical formulae. They were easy to read and easy to form. Therefore Master Nikodem had become the only instructor in the keep who had any positive feelings towards Lambert’s chances of surviving the Trials and becoming a witcher. Mostly, Lambert had resolved not to give a shit. He hadn’t asked to become a trainee, after all.

On days like today, however, Lambert wished he had even half the ability of his peers when it came to book learning. Their class had been assigned an essay on water-dwelling monsters from Master Szymon, who taught their lessons on common beasts and how to kill them. After supper all the trainees in the class had tromped upstairs to the library to start their research.

Now the others were happily ensconced around one of the heavy wooden tables in a room lit brightly by lantern light, whispering to each other as they swapped books back and forth and pointed out relevant passages, and Lambert was alone. There was no point in him sitting with the other trainees, even if they would have allowed it. He wouldn’t be any use in their discussion--certainly he couldn’t just skim a page looking for a relevant bit of information and read it out loud.

Lambert stood in front of the bookcase of bestiaries, shifting from foot to foot as he considered his options. He knew that the heavy, thick, illuminated bestiaries would be easier to understand, since they were always written in a neat hand and had pictures besides. In contrast, the firsthand accounts written by actual witchers often had cramped and sloppy writing, but were likely to contain more exciting accounts of monster encounters. Lambert snatched one of the thin witcher journals off the shelf and carried it back to a dead-end corner of the stacks where he could labor over the words in peace.

Lambert wasn’t uninterested in learning about monsters. He found himself listening raptly to Master Szymon’s stories of defeating beasts he’d encountered on the Path. But hearing about them in class and reading about them in impenetrable tomes were very different tasks. This account, written half a century ago by a Griffin witcher, listed several water creatures in the index. Lambert flipped to an entry labeled “rusalka” and tried to make out the spidery writing that scratched across the page in uneven lines. The sentences remained stubbornly impenetrable:

_I firstswa a rusoika in Vclcn, en e uot sbring dayiv 1142. The townselboeb redortep thct sxi gouny men hop disabbeared inthe dast yacr._

Lambert blinked and tried to read it over again, but the words still didn’t make sense. It wasn’t in some foreign language--Lambert was just stupid. A burst of suppressed laughter drifted in from the room where the other trainees were reading, and rage rose in Lambert. Of course the other trainees were laughing at him; no one else had any difficulty understanding perfectly simple words. Of course the ignorant son of a drunken farmer wasn’t fit for any kind of learning. But if Lambert was just going to fail at being a trainee and die in some Trial, then why had they taken him, anyway?

With a snarl of frustration, Lambert flung the book. It thudded into the bookshelf at the far end of the row and fluttered to the ground like a wounded bird. Lambert sat with his fists clenched at his sides, breathing heavily.

“Uh, hello?” Another trainee poked his head around the corner with a worried frown. It was one of Lambert’s year-mates: the short one with black hair, sun-touched golden skin, and dark eyes wide behind spectacles he wouldn’t need after the Trials, if he survived. Lambert searched for the boy’s name: Voltehre. Not one who’d been particularly cruel to Lambert when he’d arrived, but not anyone Lambert had become friendly with, either. Though to be fair, Lambert couldn’t honestly say there was anyone he was _friendly_ with.

“What do you want?” Lambert growled.

“I thought there might be a wight back here, throwing things.” Voltehre stepped around the corner and leaned against the bookshelf.

“There’s not,” Lambert said sharply.

“Too bad,” Voltehre sighed. “Could have been fun.” He reached down to pick up the book, and looked at the title embossed on the cover. “Did Griffin Witcher Feliks piss you off?”

“It’s a stupid book.” Lambert looked at the floor as he said it. The books didn’t seem stupid when Master Szymon read passages from them in class. Lambert himself was the stupid one.

“We’ve got some of the water-creature-specific bestiaries in the other room if you want to share,” Voltehre said, hooking a thumb back the way he’d come.

“No.” Lambert crossed his arms over his chest and put on his most savage glare.

“Why not?” Voltehre asked, ignoring the glare.

“You know why,” Lambert snapped. His hands tightened into fists. If this kid came any closer, he’d show him what he’d learned that wasn’t in any of these books.

“Uh, not really,” Voltehre said with a shrug. “Don’t know much about you. You’re not real forthcoming.”

“So fuck off, then.”

Voltehre took a step closer, squinting at Lambert from behind those stupid spectacles. “No, really, why don’t you just come work with the rest of us?”

“I can’t,” Lambert said through clenched teeth. There was no reason for this kid to care except to have another reason to laugh at him. And if Voltehre laughed right now, Lambert wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.

“What, are you too good to--”

“I can’t fucking read!” Lambert sucked in a breath and pressed his mouth shut. He hadn’t meant to say that. He’d only wanted Voltehre to shut up. And he had. Voltehre was frowning at him, head cocked to the side.

“You…” Voltehre said slowly. He had to have known already. Lambert hadn’t been able to keep it hidden. The whole cohort had suffered through Lambert’s stilted attempts whenever Master Marcin made them read the day’s history lesson aloud. With his head down to hide his flushed cheeks, Lambert had heard his classmates’ sighs of impatience and barely-repressed giggles. It wasn’t a secret to his year-mates that Lambert was an imbecile. “But… what…”

“Just fuck off.” Lambert turned his back on Voltehre and stood looking at the wall and blinking hard, waiting for the tread of feet on the creaky library floor. It came eventually, but Voltehre wasn’t walking away. Instead he stepped up behind Lambert and stopped a few paces away.

“Have you done the alchemy homework?”

“Why?” Lambert asked. When Voltehre didn’t answer, Lambert turned halfway around and regarded him suspiciously. Lambert had, in fact, finished the assignment between lessons this morning; he could do decoctions in his sleep. “What if I did?”

“I have an idea.” Voltehre pushed his spectacles further up onto his nose, and gave Lambert an eager smile. “What creature is your essay on?”

“Why?” Lambert asked again. When Voltehre only raised an eyebrow at him, Lambert said, “Rusalka.”

“Come on, then.” Voltehre pocketed the Griffin journal, and picked another half-dozen books off the shelves they passed as Voltehre led them out of the library. Lambert drifted behind, a bit bewildered.

Voltehre didn’t say anything as they wended their way through the corridors, but Lambert kept alert for ambush. When they reached the door to the stillroom, Lambert said, “I’m already done with my--”

“I know,” Voltehre said cheerfully as he pushed through the door. He deposited his armful of books on an empty worktable and plopped down on the stool next to it, facing Lambert. “Here’s my proposal. You brew me the wraith decoction we’ve been assigned, and I’ll read you some stuff about rusalkas while you do it.”

Lambert narrowed his eyes. “You want me to do your alchemy homework for you.”

“Lambert, if I spent all night in this room, I couldn’t make a passable wraith decoction,” Voltehre sighed. And that was likely true. Lambert had seen Voltehre's alchemy projects boil over, burn, smoke, or explode in nearly every class. Master Nikodem had despaired of him.

“It’s not hard,” Lambert muttered.

“Some people think reading isn’t hard,” Voltehre said lightly.

Lambert frowned. And yeah, sure, he probably couldn’t throw stones at any other trainee’s talents or lack thereof, but messing up a potion here and there wasn’t exactly the same as not being able to decipher any of the books in the library or write down his own notes. Instead of answering, Lambert said, “We have to learn to do this stuff on our own. Witchers work alone.”

“We’re not witchers yet,” Voltehre pointed out, then shrugged. “Odds are we’ll die before then, anyway.”

An incredulous laugh escaped Lambert. He hadn’t laughed in quite a while. It swept away the sharpest edges of his anger. “All right. I’ll make your decoction.”

“Good.” Voltehre grabbed the top volume from the stack of books, flipped it open, and began to read. “An accounting of the contract in Oakhurst village, being a most stubborn example of the creature rusalka.”

Lambert gathered ingredients, then chopped and mixed and brewed while he listened. It was a simple decoction, and didn’t take much of his attention. Lambert found himself absorbed in the accounts Voltehre read, imagining fights with rusalkas and comparing how the different witchers had defeated them.

Halfway through the third account, Lambert looked away from the mixture he was stirring to stop Voltehre mid-sentence. “Wait, I thought Gideon wrote that rusalkas were freshwater creatures. Why’s this one in the ocean?”

“Uh, let me see.” Voltehre scanned further down the page with his finger. “Oh, there’s a footnote. ‘As this account is secondhand, it is conceivable that this creature was misidentified by witnesses. In fact, a local expert hypothesized that the Rusalka of Pont Vanis may instead have been a particularly aggressive mermaid.’ Huh.”

“This author’s an idiot. If it never came out of the water, it probably wasn’t a rusalka.” Lambert moved the mixture off the flame to cool, and noticed Voltehre was watching him over the top of his spectacles. “What?”

“Nothing.” Voltehre ducked his head over the book again, but Lambert could have sworn he was hiding a smile. “You want the rest of this account or a different one?”

“Different.” Lambert stirred the decoction with unnecessary force. “This asshole only mentioned _in a footnote_ that the rusalka he was talking about probably wasn’t a rusalka at all. Can’t trust anything he says.”

“On to the Annals of the Bear Witcher Alojzy, then.”

“Bring on the annals!” Lambert said, and Voltehre cackled.

By the time Lambert had produced a bottle of wraith decoction, moderately over-brewed at Voltehre’s request (“So old Nikodem might actually believe I made it.”), Lambert was mentally outlining his essay on the characteristics of the rusalka and the ways to kill it, and felt much less like burning down the keep than he had earlier that evening.

“Thanks,” Voltehre said, taking the bottle from Lambert. “He’s gonna assign us foglet decoction on Friday, isn’t he.”

“Or maybe archgriffin,” Lambert said. “If he keeps going with the properties of blowball.”

“Fuck, even worse,” Voltehre groaned. “I hate working with ribleaf. It’s so fiddly to cut up, and it’s just about two seconds’ difference between oversteeped and understeeped.”

“It’s not--”

“Not that hard, I know, thanks asshole.” Voltehre gave Lambert a grin as he said it, such that the insult didn’t actually sting, and slid the books off the worktable. “What would you take to make it for me?”

“You’re not gonna even try?”

“What does Master Vesemir say in sword training?” Voltehre asked.

"Uh, get that guard up? Faster, you lazy ragamuffins? Parry after a--"

“Play to your strengths," Voltehre said, giving Lambert a gentle shove that didn't even rock him on his feet. "You’re good at alchemy, I’m not. What if I wrote your essay for you?”

Lambert ran a cloth over the worktable as he considered. The hardest part of the assignment, the research, was already done. It seemed a pity to waste tonight’s labor. “I already know what I need to say,” he temporized.

“No, I mean write it down,” Voltehre said. “You tell me what you want it to say, I put it on paper.”

Lambert imagined the headache he’d inevitably get hunched over parchment, trying to form letters that went wrong-shaped and switched places as he wrote. He knew the words; it would just take him twice as long as it ought to get them to cooperate. But if Voltehre would scribe for him… “Master Szymon knows your handwriting.”

“I’ll write left-handed,” Voltehre said. “Looks like shit, but all the more reason for him to think it’s yours.”

Lambert groped about for another objection, but couldn’t find one. The tantalizing possibility that he wouldn’t have to spend another long, miserable night in the library, and could trade that for time in the stillroom instead, was too good to pass up. “Alright.”

“Good!” Voltehre shifted the pile of books into the crook of his elbow and stuck out a hand for Lambert to shake. “It’s agreed. Meet you here tomorrow after supper?”

“Yeah,” Lambert said, putting his hand in Voltehre’s.

“Thanks for the help.” Voltehre actually sounded sincere, and he left the room without any kind of parting shot.  
\-----------------------------------

Lambert strode into the library, and a group of younger trainees, only just past the Grasses, scattered out of his way. He knew right where he’d find Voltehre, in the sunniest spot in the library, on the mezzanine level below a set of skylights. Lambert passed almost every other remaining witcher of their cohort, crammed into their own nooks, reading or writing. Their instructors had been piling on assignments, trying to squeeze in a few last pieces of book learning before tomorrow’s Trial of the Medallion.

Voltehre saw Lambert approaching, finished scrawling something on his parchment, and set down his quill. As Lambert dropped into the seat next to him, Voltehre fanned out the fingers of his right hand and yawned. Lambert set the vial of Superior Cat on the desk, and Voltehre swept it into his pocket with a practiced motion.

“Did you remember not to do it perfectly this time?” Voltehre asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Nah,” Lambert said. “They might have us use our own brews for the Trial, and you don’t want something even a little sub-par.”

“Oh.” Voltehre blinked at him, and rubbed at his nose, that gesture he’d never quite forgotten even after the Grasses had ended the need for spectacles. “Thanks. What’ll I do when I’m out on the Path on my own?”

“Eh, if we die, we die,” Lambert shrugged.

They both laughed uproariously until Henryk stuck his head into the alcove and said, “Oh, it’s you two,” rolled his eyes, and left.

Voltehre rubbed tears from his eyes and got his amusement under control. “Alright, you ready for one last essay?”

“You sure you’re up for this?” Lambert asked.

“My left hand’s not tired.” Voltehre drew out a fresh piece of parchment. “And at this point, the instructors would be pretty damn suspicious if your handwriting got too legible.”

He took Lambert’s dictation with the efficiency of long practice, and before the bell had rung for supper Voltehre was making his usual pass through the essay to smear a few words and muddle the grammar here and there. “Alright, here it is: A Comparison of the Zygmund and Pawel Methods for Preventing Necrophage Resurgence in Previously Infested Regions.”

“Something I’m sure will come in handy all the time on the Path,” Lambert grumbled. “Gimme that.” He crumpled the parchment at the edges a bit for verisimilitude before rolling it up. “Might be the last one of those you have to do.”

“If I’m lucky. C’mon.” Voltehre led the way back through the library, towards the great hall and the smell of food. “Though if there’s no more essays, how will I bribe you to make me some elixirs to take with me?”

“I was thinking,” Lambert said slowly. “You might make me some contracts with spots to fill in the details. So I wouldn’t need to read whatever some village headman tries to write up.”

Voltehre nodded. “Yeah, I could do that. I…” He slowed to a stop in a deserted row of bookshelves, and Lambert stopped with him. The amber light of sunset filtered down in dusty rays and picked out the scar on Voltehre’s chin, and the other cuts and scrapes he’d accumulated in training. “You don’t have to trade me. Once we make it through this.” Voltehre toyed with the hem of his shirt. “I’ll help you whenever I can, whenever we see each other. I don’t want you to think you have to pay for it or something. I’d help just because I’m your friend.”

“Oh.” Lambert blinked. “I…” He tightened his hand around the parchment. He wanted to say that of course he’d do the same. He’d brew whatever Voltehre wanted, spend all night distilling spirits, cut his ribleaf for him, anything. Voltehre deserved to have the best potions there were, and the gods knew he couldn’t make them himself. But the words tangled in Lambert's throat the way they did on the page, and instead he said, “Yeah, thanks.”  
\--

Lambert sat with his feet up on a pile of books, watching the sunset through the skylight in Voltehre’s favorite library alcove. He gripped his new medallion, letting the sharp edges of it dig into the skin of his palm. There were still stray fragments of parchment scattered about, scraps of essays Voltehre had been working on for the Advanced Historical Perspectives seminar he’d been taking. Useless, now. Lambert hadn’t wanted so badly to burn the library down in years. There was no one here to tell him how ridiculous that was, no one ready with a witty comment to blunt the edges of his rage. And there wouldn’t be.

That’s what the instructors had tried to drum into their heads for years: that the life of a witcher was a solitary one, in the end. Nothing worth keeping for yourself: no feelings, no friends. No one who knew you as anything other than just another witcher. No one who thought of you fondly. No one to help you.

Lambert swept the books onto the floor with a snarl, then whirled and stomped out of the library, sending trainees jumping out of his way as he went. He swept past the stillroom, past classrooms where he’d spent so many of his days, and up the narrow stairway to his solitary room, in a row with the others of his cohort who were dead, dead, _dead._ He dragged out the bags he’d been given and began shoving his things into them: clothes, weapons, anything that came to hand.

Lined up by category on his tiny desk were twice as many potions as Lambert needed. He’d been brewing them in preparation for… Well, they wouldn't be needed now. He packed them carefully in neat rows, padded with rags, and slammed the case of bottles shut. There wasn’t much in the room, after that, which seemed right. Empty, just like all of Kaer Morhen.

Lambert laid down on his narrow cot and closed his eyes, trying to slow his breaths and his racing heart. He’d leave as soon as he could, as soon as they’d let him go. It was incredibly stupid to have forgotten that this place held nothing good for him and never would, stupid to think of this place as anything like a home. But then, Lambert had always been stupid.

**Author's Note:**

> And here's some other lines from the poem from which the title comes that might be useful right now:
> 
> _Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror._  
>  _Just keep going. No feeling is final._


End file.
